Misdiagnosis of the bacterial skin condition cellulitis often leads to unnecessary antibiotic use and hospitalizations, a new study says.
About one-third of people diagnosed with cellulitis don’t actually have it, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston found.
The researchers looked at a 30-month period, examining the medical records of 259 people hospitalized for lower extremity cellulitis in the hospital’s emergency department.
But, 79 of the patients didn’t have cellulitis. Almost 85 percent didn’t need hospitalization and 92 percent didn’t need the antibiotics they received, the researchers said.